Life in the Slow Lane

Today, while simultaneously baking a banana cake for my mom's birthday, looking for birthday candles (which I think I pitched when I moved to Maine, in a heroic effort at dejunking), reading up on docs and source code for my next project at work, wondering why the basement smells weird (is there a gas leak or does my house just smell?), and looking for a pair of old blue jeans to cut up for my dad's Christmas present, I paused. I looked outside at the beautiful snow covering my deck, my driveway, my street. Then, I turned on my Christmas lights in the kitchen. Woo! White Christmas? I will finish shoveling my driveway...tomorrow.

Yesterday evening I was feeling a little under the weather (flu is going around and my Monday afternoon student was sick), so I decided to go to bed early, around 8:45. Then, of course I couldn't sleep. Around 11:30, I lifted my head from the pillow to look out my attic window. There, moonlight cast the shadows of naked trees onto the ocean of snow and for just a moment I was sure that I was looking, not at shadows of branches, but at tree roots slithering across my yard.

I rolled out of bed, put on 2 fleeces and a sweater over my pajamas, managed to locate my wind pants, donned boots and scarf and hat and mittens and coat, and slipped out the front door into the yard to make snow angels in the quiet of the night.

Thus fortified, I returned to my nest where I dreamed vivid dreams.

Last Friday I awoke to the sound of dripping and cars on the wet street. Preparing myself for a day of rainy, slushy crappiness, I shimmied out from under my electric blanket to raise the blinds. And discovered a fairyland.

Rain the night before, followed by sticky snow, had coated everything with a layer of white fluff. Marshmallowy trees looked suddenly majestic, and bushes groaned under their cargo. There's something about a layer of snow that makes everything look...cleaner. Watching the hedge struggle with its white weight gave it new life in my eyes.

The best thing about being a kid in winter was lying in bed in the morning after a big snowfall, listening to the radio for the school closings, hearing your school on the list, and going back to sleep for another couple of hours. And then going outside and making a snow fort. Working at home means I can't play Snow Hooky (is that like Ice Hockey?), but I'm still looking forward to Wednesday night's Nor'easter. The sky has been white for 2 days already, and I've been cozying up in layers (current count: 4 on top, 2 on bottom). I'm ready. Let it snow!

Sunday brought amazing weather: sunny, warm, breezy. Just right for a day of sailing after my church gig was over.

It was, indeed, a great sailing day. Even when I slipped during a tack and flipped the boat. And got tangled in a bunch of ropes as the boat went over (I ended up under the boat telling myself not to panic, which I didn't, and fortunately extracted myself from the ropes just before B. found my foot and pulled me out from under the cockpit).

Good thing I've been exercising every morning, because I needed all the muscle I had to haul myself up onto the bow of the boat (it sure looks a lot higher from the water line...). Got a couple of bad bruises, but B. has worse ones. Amazingly, we emerged from our unscheduled ocean swim with sunglasses (and in my case, rubber boots) intact. Now I'm careful to brace my feet on the centerboard.

What do I love about thunderstorms? The pelting rain, the noise, the suddenly dark skies, the trees tossing in the wind, the running around madly shutting windows and doors, the flickering lights. Whenever a summer storm hits, I always wish I were in a rickety rental cabin on Webb Lake, drinking lemonade and putting together a jigsaw puzzle by candlelight. Ah, summer in Maine.

This afternoon we had several thunderstorms, after which the temperature was still in the mid-'80s, with unbelievably sticky humidity. Unfair! Fortunately it cooled down to the mid-'70s by 8pm, but I was still so hot that I had to draw a cold bath to get my body temperature down enough so that I could concentrate on work.

Naturally, my ever-curious feline companion decided to investigate. She perched on the edge of the tub for some time (for a cat who hates drinking out of the water dish, an entire tubful of water with a human island in it was almost too much to resist). She did manage to get her nose and front paws down to water level while just barely retaining her position on the tub edge, a poster cat for yoga class. I was just waiting for her to fall in. Oh well, maybe next time. :-)

Yesterday I got on my bike at around 8 AM and rode downtown to the farmers' market in Deering Oaks Park. It was so nice; lots of great stuff. If I had been going home right away I would have bought corn. Instead I confined my purchases to 2 "junior" cucumbers and 3 of the glossiest eggplants I have ever seen. I could see them glowing from 10 feet away and had to have them!

I then proceeded to the Eastern Promenade to stretch out a bit and, I thought, to lounge around planning my new computer curriculum. Howevah, the Eastern Prom is pretty sunny in the morning (being in the east...) so I decided I'd ride over to Cape Elizabeth and come back later. Around 11:30 I arrived back at the Prom and sat down for some reading, but then discovered I was starving. So much for lounging! I went home, made lunch, and took a nap.

I thought, "huh, I biked 22 miles and feel pretty OK." But TODAY I'm really feeling it...

I celebrated today's perfectly sunny, warm, breezy weather by biking 10 miles, with stops downtown at the library, the Oriental Sun market, the local whole food co-op, and the farmers' market. I put in a couple of hours of violin practice (after biking 10 miles! I have energy to play the violin! My fingers move! Yay!) while enjoying the wind rippling through my living room curtains, followed by an afternoon and evening spent in the Papasan chair in the attic reading a mystery. Nestled up there amid a ridiculous number of pillows, listening to the rustling of the maple trees, feeling the cool sea breeze, turning pages with one hand while petting Bonita (who decided to warm my lap and shed all over my bike shorts) with the other...does life get any better than this?

...is that if I miss a UPS drop-off, I can call and pick it up the same day at the local facility. Portland rocks.

At our cluster meeting on Wednesday we all agreed that driving around Portland has been much nicer since gas prices began to skyrocket. On the highway cars are seldom going over 55, and people aren't tailgating and hitting the brakes or flooring it when the light turns green. I had thought I was just imagining this, but now I'm convinced it's really true. Wonder how long it will last.

What a treat to see Lori and Austen this weekend! Bonita was glad to see them at first, but was quickly saturated with Toddler Terror and spent Saturday and Sunday in her "scary cat" mode, creeping around growling and hissing when she wasn't sitting between the shower curtains on the tub rim.

Now she's recovered and is snoozing in my lap, making it very difficult to get up and practice Nutcracker, which is what I should be doing. ;-)

We had a beautiful day on Saturday and hit some Portland-area highlights: Mackworth Island, Portland Head Light, and Silly's, where Austen consulted the Magic 8-ball.

Austen gave us a glorious example of the highs and lows of a day in the life of raising a toddler. He is still wicked cute, though. The moments of Extreme Cuteness ("extreme cuteness alert! beep beep beep...") such as this are making my mom want a grandchild, I bet. ;-P

Lori and Austen got on the road with some homemade applesauce and my last jar of blueberry jam. I miss them already!

Last winter I would come across a ladybug every once in a while, often in the bathroom (making me wonder what kind of food there was in the bathroom that would sustain ladybugs). It always made me feel happy that my apartment was supporting these bright little creatures.

Yesterday I saw my first winter ladybug, crawling along my [year-round] Christmas lights in the living room. Winter is coming!

Veterans' Day! I taught violin lessons today in the afternoon and evening, but the rest of the day was all mine. I began by getting up at 6:45 instead of 5:45 (despite attempts by Bonita to get me to play with her, starting with Torture by Licking at 4 a.m.), cooking breakfast, and then going out back to finish digging my ditch and filling it up with brush. I'm making a sort of cross between a swale (a ditch on contour for water catchment) and a hugelkultur (a way of preparing a mound of branches, compost, and soil for planting). Pictures to come as I continue the project.

At 11:30 I started out on a walk/hike on trails in my neighborhood. The trail I took starts in back of the Unitarian church. Pictured here are the church canoes on their rack, ready for winter. It's a very Green [Party] church. This is the church I probably should be attending if I felt like going to church on purpose and if I weren't already committed to going to First Lutheran to play and sing.

After about 20 minutes I reached Oat Nuts Park, where the major trail starts. I discovered the tiny entrance to this huge preserve last year, soon after I had moved into my new house, when I was out exploring the neighborhood on foot. Portland Trails maintains miles of trails in and around Portland, and Oat Nuts Park abuts the Presumpscot River Preserve, which is where I walked today.

If I hadn't already been fortified with 2 deviled eggs (I am such a deviled egg addict), this sign would have made me hungry. :-)

The weather was beautiful and the trails were mostly deserted, and though I was sad that I didn't get my Fall Leaf Walk (almost all leaves are down now), it was still relaxing to walk along the river and through the forest. The whole trip took about 2 hours, giving me enough time to get cleaned up before my lessons and to placate Clingy Cat for a while.

The day before Thanksgiving dawned cold and snowy. I love waking up to snowflakes (but not so many snowflakes that I have to go outside and start up the snowblower). Now I really have to get serious about looking for some warm winter boots. No frostbite allowed on my toes this year!

These are paperwhites from Lori's baby shower last October. I planted them this past Spring, then forgot about them on the deck, where they dried out. I figured I had killed them and left them out for squirrel food. Come Fall, with its ample rainfall, they decided to come up. Oops! Just in time to be killed by winter. Maybe I'll let them be and see if they can figure out how to get back on the right season again.

Being single in my own apartment means that I can hang my underwear in the shower and store my eggshells in the oven. Life is good.

Inside, Bonita is under the covers. Outside, snow softens everything and makes me giggly and cheerful. M. and I went downtown today and did a little Christmas shopping (he actually accomplished some shopping, while I am still trying to figure out what to get Ryan and my parents). It was snowy and sunny, a gorgeous day in Portland.

After making a stop at the Sun Oriental Market to check out knives and foodstuffs, we went by Longfellow Square to say hi to Longfellow, decked out for the season in a scarf and holding presents. He was never decorated like this when I was a kid, but I love the silliness of it.

We spent a long time in Longfellow Books (not at Longfellow Square as I had assumed, but actually off Monument Square), browsed in a few stores in the Old Port, trekked down to Commercial Street and then up to Silly's for some long-overdue lunch. A lovely winter day. Next: skiing!

A mild, sunny Saturday found me on a homemade tandem bicycle with M., touring Willard Square and Fort Williams, followed by lunch, a couple hours of arranging, and an energetic contradance in Bowdoinham. If every Winter month has a day or two like that, I can handle Winter here.

On the other hand, I'm dreaming of lots of snow so I can try out my new snowshoes.

I've been so excited to see snow today--of course I want to ski and try out my Christmas snowshoes, but I also just want to be inside watching the snow fall. This morning I kept waking up and opening the shades to see if it had started yet. Nope. Nope. Still nope. Finally, at 7:30, it was there. Yaaaaaayyyyyy! And blowing like the dickens. Yikes!

I'm waking up in the morning feeling too warm under my blankets, Bonita is on top of the blankets instead of snuggled under them, dawn comes before I leave my house in the morning, the sun is warm on me as I walk home from school...I think Spring is coming!

I feel completely safe saying this, since if Nature reads this and decides to dump 2 feet of snow on me, at least I would finally be able to try out the snowshoes I got for Christmas.

I am a little worried that this winter's lack of snow will mean fewer blueberries on the mountain this summer, though. Hmmm. Now I'm all tangled up and can't figure out whether I want Spring to come or not. Sheesh.

We've gotten to that strange pre-Spring season, the season when 60-degree days are followed by 30-degree days, and when people are wearing T shirts when it's not quite T shirt weather. Lib's Dairy Treats opened on the first day of spring, and people are sitting outside eating ice cream, wearing winter coats.

The weekend was a glorious, warm affair that lured me outside to finish my ditch and to prune some trees (with much help from M.). Also took a lovely walk on Westport Island (near Wiscasset). 30 degrees this morning, and snow predicted for tomorrow/Wednesday. Argh! Guess it's a good thing I didn't pull the leaves off of my flower beds yet.

My summer dreams are daydreams...dreams of getting up at the crack of dawn to bicycle next to the ocean, or watching my perennial herbs and cover crops come up, or going into school to work on curriculum whenever I want, or going hiking, or dancing, or any number of things that I probably won't have time for. :-) Today it's easy to dream because it's warm outside!

Now I can fly JetBlue from Portland to JFK without breaking the bank and without spending 8 hours on the bus. Yay! Though I totally disapprove of the United States -- I should be taking a high-speed train for that kind of a jaunt. Oh well.

"The Chocolate Bar" is really named "The Bar of Chocolate Cafe", but I like the misnomer better. This week a bunch of us Tango folks went there on Wednesday after the practica, ate, drank, and danced in this cute little cafe on Wharf Street (the 2-block-long cobblestone street halfway between Commercial Street and Fore Street), downstairs from The Wine Bar. Tonight we met there again--not so much dancing this time since it was more crowded, but still a great atmosphere and an agreeable kitchen staff who will bring me sandwiches without the bread, artfully presented. We'll probably take it over for an informal milonga on a slow night, maybe Mondays, as part of the "get out and dance in restaurants" focus group of the Portland Tango scene. What fun!

More rain today. The claypan in my yard where I planted the daikon radish seeds is now underwater (again). I felt sorry for the little guys this week as they drowned. I felt slightly better about the whole lake-in-the-yard business when I went over to S.'s house and lovely wild gardens in Cumberland to dig some plants and she said, "any interest in low-bush cranberries? You don't need a bog..." to which I replied, "no problem! I have a bog!" After 4 hours I went home with a fogged-up carful ( and trunkful) of plants, some of which I managed to get in the ground before it became too rainy and too dark to continue. I'm now completely soaked, muddy and utterly happy with my day.

A rainy Saturday is fine when I've been to the farmers' market and am now indoors, finishing up my arrangement of Cumparsita while my houseguest snoozes on the couch looking so impossibly sweet that I'm sure it can't be legal. Tomorrow: a tango wedding reception!

I was on the table for so long today at the chiropractor that my right arm fell asleep. It didn't feel asleep, so I didn't realize it until I reached down to grab my keys...and couldn't control my arm or my hand. Every time something like this happens I have one of those moments when I think "oh crap, not again..."

I shook it out, and by the time I got to the grocery store it was feeling pretty normal, but just in case it was a harbinger of another relapse, I decided to go do something fun during my possible "last day." Up to swing on the swings on the Eastern Prom. The sun was setting, shining across the bay onto South Portland and Fort Gorges, Fall leaves all glowing. The cold wind bit my ears and made me sniffly. I think that's the nicest swingset in Portland.

Took the ol' Brompton out for a spin today. Maybe not the best day for a bike ride. I think I was almost going backwards at one point as I was trying to cross Tukey's Bridge.

Watching the gulls ride the crazy gusts, I was wondering whether they were thinking "Wheeeeeee!" or "Oh CRAP!" Huh.

It's cold! Yay! It was 20° this morning when I awoke at 5:30, and I actually had to put on extra clothing before I started my daily physical therapy. Bonita, usually the one with the internal alarm clock that requires her to wake me up an hour and a half before my alarm goes off, didn't budge from her nest on the bed until it became obvious that I was really not coming back. Tonight, after Nutcracker rehearsal, I dropped off the pianist at her house and stopped by Shaw's to get some stuff for Thanksgiving. Nippy nose, the smell of the wreaths outside the supermarket, the wood racks filling the parking lot of Lib's Dairy Freeze, (empty now but soon to be filled with Christmas trees)...all of these things contributed to my Winter Fever (hmmmm, "Winter Fever"?) For the last 2 weeks I've been staring hopefully at the morning's white sky thinking "snow?" and dreaming of bushes covered with snow, icicles, cross-country skiing, and trying out the snowshoes Mom got me last Christmas that caused it to not snow for the rest of the winter. I. Can't. Wait. Pleasepleasepleaseplease snow! And could it be a storm with nice big, fluffy, satisfying flakes that drops at least a foot on us and then doesn't melt into slush afterwards? Please?

Tara Tango Shoes happens to be in South Portland, and this Sunday she had a sale for local dancers. I jumped at the chance to go over, since I ordered a pair of black Celos in June and they still hadn't arrived. I ended up trying on a pair of the Celos in the metallic leather, which looked far better in person than on the Internet, and walked out of there with them instead of the ones I had originally ordered. I also ended up getting a size 8.5 instead of a 9.5 (!), so I was glad to have the chance to try them on.

By far, the most stable shoes I tried on were the Celos and the Alma. I was really surprised that the Alma felt so steady on the floor, but they were rock-solid. If I felt like spending another pile of money on a second pair of shoes, maybe I would get a pair of those. Or maybe I would just wait and have some heels made for me in Buenos Aires. :-)

Trying on fabulous shoes is fun, but so much more fun when surrounded by giggling ladies who are also trying on fabulous shoes. Many of the same gals were at the practica that evening and it seemed like we were all still feeling the giggly, festive atmosphere of the shoe sale (plus, a bunch of ladies were wearing the new shoes). Later, after going to Norm's with a bunch of the tango crowd, I was thinking how great it is to have so many fun, friendly women in tango. When I compare the tango women of Portland (having clothing swaps, parties, and working together at practices to improve) with a large number of the tango women in San Francisco, there's just no contest; the tango scene here is small but the people are fabulous.

And we have Tara Shoes. Whee!

...to do a Tango Mucha Labia photo shoot in January, outdoors, with me wearing one of Liz's flimsy little tango dresses? And how come Liz got to wear my black pants while I somehow ended up being the one with the bare legs? I suppose it was the boots. Anyway. Nathan Eldridge is very talented. He shot some great photos this afternoon. I'll soon be using them to get the TML web site up and running.

Now I'm home, eradicating the remains of my congestion with a saltwater sinus bath, courtesy of Tina's turkey baster. :-) I find the whole sinus-flushing operation mildly yucky--a bit too stimulating for my poor sinuses. It's unbearable if the liquid moves too quickly. When I get it going slowly, it's not horrible enough for me to not do it, but unpleasant enough that I'm glad when I'm done. It does work magic on my congestion, though. Last night I could actually breathe for the first time in a week when lying horizontal.

Snow day today, though so far there's practically no accumulation. The sky is white, so where is it all going? Bonita is curled up on the back of the beanbag armchair, nose and paws dangling over the baseboard heater, fur ruffling ever so slightly in the heat. I've caught up on my grading and have put my house back together after spending several hours last night looking for my passport. Gack. I finally located it in a folder in my filing cabinet, where it had fallen at some point, probably due to Bonita walking around on top of the files the way she does.

I'm mostly packed, except for a few items such as tango music that I want to play with Dom. Hard to believe that on Saturday morning I will get off a plane and it will be summer. (Harder to believe that I have a 7-hour layover in Dulles...maybe time to arrange 2 more waltzes for TML?) Hard to believe that I get to spend an entire week in Buenos Aires with a sweet, super-sexy bandoneonista. I may not survive this.

It was a quiet and productive snow day, I thought, as I noodled around on the violin, figuring out how to play the guitar solo to Nothing Else Matters. I did my bookkeeping for 2006 (house and business), baked 2 chocolate cakes for tomorrow's classes, caught up on all of my grading...and all while enjoying the look of snow falling outside. Then suddenly: ping! the sound of freezing rain on glass.

In a flash, the violin went in the case and--poof!--I morphed into Marshmallow Woman (thanks to some awesome snowpants I bought at Marden's). Portrait: Marshmallow Woman with Shovel. And Snow Scoop. And Snowblower. Up and down the street, snowblowers materialized from garages in a race to clear the foot or so of powder before everything became crunchy. I finished shoveling off the first floor deck as pointy airborne ice nuggets started to get serious. Then, inside. For once I'm happy that the attic is 10 degrees cooler . I'm plenty warm at the moment.

And now, sudden silence. Neighbors have finished, too, and the street is back to being dark and still. To bed.

After 40 minutes lying on the floor of my living room, I'm back up. Bonita, having lost her sleeping place (my chest), is now stalking around with tail swishing, shooting me dirty glances. Well, I think she is, anyway...with her myopic stare it's kind of hard to figure out where the destination of those dirty glances is. I am rolling my eyes...generally I prefer cats to dogs because cats are more independent, and then I go and adopt a cat who turns out to be clingier than most dogs. Hrmph. Howevah, she redeems herself by being wicked cute.

Anyway, prior to the 40-minute crash, I spent an hour and a half clearing snow. It's now changed to "wintry mix", with ice pellets bouncing off my windowpanes. Blech. But it's a Snow Day! Which means I could finally catch up on some of the sleep I lost during my trip to Argentina. Snowstorms in Washington, D.C. on the way home meant I got to spend 4 hours sitting on the runway at Dulles and ended up arriving home Sunday afternoon, with little time to sleep, no time to replentish my empty fridge, etc. I was praying for a snow day, because progress reports were due today and I still have a stack of grading to do. Thank you, Winter.

So, once I finish my grading and cook some dinners and arrange Nothing Else Matters for ¡Tango Mucha Labia!'s gig next weekend and practice the violin and get my taxes ready to take over to the guy who sorts them out (a luxury that was necessary last year and that I now can't give up)...after all that I will sit down at the computer and upload my Buenos Aires pictures.

It's actually nice to be back in the cold (I know, I am weird). It's also nice to be able to breathe without choking. Between the black cloud of diesel fumes that hangs over everything in Buenos Aires and the cigarette smoke, "Buenos Aires" is a bit of an ironic misnomer. But more about that later. Right now I'm going to go cook and stand around in one of my new pairs of Tango shoes and think about how to describe what I'm going to teach the Tango dancers in New Hampshire next weekend before their milona. Dynamics? Musicality? Posture? I want to use the word "energy" but I don't want it to sound too new-agey...hmmm.

I hope this is the last big snowstorm, because my snowblower ("soplador de nieve") was not so happy about moving 10 inches of heavy snow + sleet. Now it's raining. Blech.

The great thing about getting a few inches of sleet and freezing rain on top of snow is that I can now walk around on top of my yard. Yesterday I met E. and her girls at her parents' farm and we all went sledding. The runs down were almost scarily fast and the walk back up the hill on top of the crust was easy, except for the occasional "aiie!" or "oof!" that meant that E. or I had suddenly gone through. N. kept jumping up and down, trying to make holes. I told her she had another hundred pounds to go. That was the best sledding I've had in quite a while.

It really is getting to be Spring ("Spring" only lasts 3 days in Maine, but we spend weeks getting there...): it's past 6:00, sun is streaming through my southwest windows, seed catalogs are open on the kitchen table as I figure out which permaculture projects I will tackle this summer. At school, they've finally fixed the heat in my room (just in time!); they discovered that a vent had been wide open all winter, which explains why I was often wearing a hat and scarf indoors. What was that about Portland Schools going over budget on heating expenses this winter?

Now I'm gearing up for this Saturday's TML performance at the Downeast Country Dance Festival, holding the last of my parent/teacher conferences, and thinking happily of Easter weekend in NYC. And really making an effort not to eat any Cadbury Creme Eggs. :-)

I don't know why I bothered to wait until Portland was listed under the school closings this morning; it was pretty obvious that I wouldn't be at school today. I always think "maybe we'll have a snow day, and then I can sleep in!" but the reality is that once I'm up to see if it is a snow day, I'm totally awake, Bonita is tearing around the house, and at that point I might as well eat breakfast and then go start up the snowblower.

My snowblower is a "perfectly good" snowblower that appeared in my dad's yard "needing a little work." It actually runs pretty well, for a while, and it has an electric start. When I first moved back to Maine, trying to pull-start my original snowblower would kick in major MS fatigue, and always messed my shoulder up. With this snowblower, I plug it in, press the starter, get it going, unplug it, and then drive it out of the garage. Fantastic.

Howevah. When there is quite a bit of snow, or sometimes for no good reason at all, the snowblower gets tired and overheats and dies, and then I leave it where it is to cool off and go shovel the back porch or something. But today after I finished my shoveling and went to drag the snowblower back in the garage to start it again, I noticed that the light in the garage had gone off. No power. Ugh.

Fortunately, at that moment I was distracted by my neighbor getting stuck in the street after pulling out of her driveway. Our street is one of the last to be plowed and it's not driveable right now unless you have an SUV with a lot of clearance. With the help of another neighbor, we pushed her car off the road and back up the driveway. Go girl power! And then I went to see if the power was back on. Nope. But what do you know? I can now pull-start my snowblower. A new skill. :-) I used both hands and did a lot of pulling with my legs. Good balance and leverage makes up for lack of muscle sometimes.

Still snowing. I bet my flight to New York this evening will not be going. Feh.

There's a house near me that's been for sale since I moved back to Portland. It's a small, dilapidated Cape sitting on an acre of tangled swampy brush. It's old...has curving steps made of large chunks of rock, stacked on each other. I think it's just two rooms downstairs, on either side of the entrance, with a tiny upstairs. I would never buy it; it's right on the road with a shady backyard, doesn't get enough sun, needs too much work for the price they're asking. But when I look at it, I see what it was in its prime.

A few weeks ago I walked to school early in the morning and noticed that the front door of the house was hanging open. As I passed by, I looked inside at a beautiful curving staircase going right up the middle of the house. Shipbuilders in San Francisco built glorious staircases like this on a grander scale. The front door hasn't been open since, but the image of that staircase sits in my mind whenever I pass the house now. That house will continue to rot away with that beautiful staircase in it, and then one day someone will buy that property, raze the house, and build condos, or a parking lot, or something. I hope I get another glimpse of the staircase before then. Or I hope I don't, because maybe it was something about the light on the staircase that morning that made me look again. Maybe the next time it wouldn't be as beautiful to me. Maybe I just want to remember my awe at that moment. But I'll probably continue to slow down as I pass it most mornings.

I know where the cute boyz hang out!

Riverside Drive Home Depot, weekdays 1-2pm. And probably other times. :-)

"Wall bed? You mean like in the Pink Panther?" Yessah.

Yesterday I awoke with sun in my face and noticed that it was 40 degrees! At 6 a.m.! After breakfast I got on the bike to do some errands and then headed over the bridge. The sun! The breeze! The adjusted derailleurs! The ferry terminal was uninspiring as a hangout spot, but lying in the sun on the gazebo was just the thing.

I returned home to eat lunch on the deck. Indoors, Bonita was busy getting ready for summer by practicing falling off the third floor stair railing. Spring is here!

And so it was that three friends caught art from the sky and walked together in search of dinner, two dressed for the chilly Spring weather and one dressed more optimistically. The Birthday Boy arrived later, completing the tango quartet. Spring in Portland.

Yesterday S. and I drove over to the Designing Women art/craft show at Woodford's Church. On the way, we stopped at the ReStore, a building materials depot run by Habitat for Humanity. It's been open for 6 months, said an employee. Trim, posts, deck hardware, sinks, lighting, doors everywhere, appliances...and for cheap. This is my new favorite store, partly because they have some great stuff in there for incredible deals, and partly because you never know what you'll find. Plus, now I know where to donate a stove or fridge or sink or...whatever, when I start remodeling the downstairs apartment this summer.

To get to the ReStore from downtown, take Forest Ave. north almost to Morrill's corner. Turn right on Morrill St., just before Meineke (or turn right across from Goodwill, either way). Drive towards the train tracks. At the end of Morrill St, turn right into what looks like a driveway and the ReStore is in there, about halfway down on the right.

I was thinking that once the Murphy bed is done, I would sleep downstairs, but now that it's Spring, I can't imagine giving up my bed by the attic window. Waking up in the trees, the maples with their foofy umbrellas of yellow flowers, the forsythia burning in the background, the darker green of the lawn, my newly-planted keyhole garden bed just visible, with its supports in place for peas...it's extremely hard to get out of bed with all of that to look at. Coming out the front door, I want to just stop for a while and stare at the almost-blooming honeysuckle and the flowers of the plum tree that are drooping over the porch. I arrive home from school and find myself dallying in the yard, checking out all of the plants that are coming up: iris here, oregano bursting up, chives, tulips, primroses...what a lot of fun Spring is!

Tonight Tango Mucha Labia played at the North Star Cafe on Munjoy Hill. Yay. Great space, great place to dance, easy for non-dancing diners to eat and watch the dancers without having to be in the dance space, and...a miracle! Three different kinds of gluten-free baked goods! Woohoo! They also have a gluten-free bread for sandwiches. This is good stuff. Tonight I needed FOOD before playing, after a last day at school moving around file cabinets, followed by teaching 5 violin lessons, followed by hoofing it over to the cafe. I chose some kind of oatmeal chocolate chip cookie with flecks of fresh mint leaves. Yum!

The other bonus is that the sound system there is decent, which means that we (well, really Mike since he owns the stuff) don't have to schlep a ton of sound equipment. And there's not a whole lot of setup/teardown. These are good things. These are things that make all four of us want to play there more often.

Whew. Now I will crash so I can get up and shovel mulch with Mom tomorrow. She is "taking the day off" which somehow means shoveling trailerfuls of mulch? I see where I got the go-til-you-drop genes.

It's hot, hot, HOT today, and STICKY. Ewwww. Bonita is flat on the kitchen floor. I am wishing I were at the beach, but instead I'm at home trying not to move until we drive downtown and get into the back of a U-Haul truck with other Tango Mucha Labia members and tango dancers wearing local art, ready to show up at undisclosed locations around Portland for impromptu Mobile Tango and Art Show performances as part of First Friday art goodness. Somehow the thought of packing myself (and my violin) into the back of a U-Haul truck in this heat is not making me extremely excited.

It's so, so, so beautiful today. Perfect weather. Biking to the farmers' market today, it really felt like Fall. After 6½ hours at school moving furniture and installing computers, it really felt like Fall. Maybe if I take a nap now I'll have enough energy to take a little bike ride this evening. Yay! Fall!